


Seven Lifetimes

by TwilightXari



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-12
Updated: 2013-06-12
Packaged: 2017-12-14 19:48:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwilightXari/pseuds/TwilightXari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knows they're not the right words, but he hopes that, after seven lifetimes, John will understand anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seven Lifetimes

It's been seven months. Seven months that feel like seven years.

He knows he's being ridiculous. Superstitious. Unwilling to accept the truth. In his therapist's words, "You need to let go, John."

But he can't.

After Sherlock had... _after_ , Mrs. Hudson had dutifully rounded up his things, boxed them up, put them away. Probably didn't want to be reminded of what was missing every time she brought John up a cuppa on Sunday afternoons.

Over the past seven months, though, some things had found their way back, out of the boxes and onto the mantle, the table, the desk.

The skull had been first. If he'd been asked, he couldn't have said why. At first he'd rationalized it by telling himself he was lonely, and if the skull had been good enough conversation for Sherlock, then surely it would be good enough company for him. (It wasn't.)

Eventually he stopped trying to rationalize it at all, and books had migrated back onto the shelves, messy and out of order and if Sherlock were here he would be throwing a  _fit_  about the state of it all.

After all, Mrs. Hudson had ruined his sock index.

After six months and nineteen days, John fixes it as best he can, and now Sherlock's socks are alone in his dresser, carefully catalogued.

Some days, he knows he's lost it, and that he should be trying to move on, even if he knows he can't.

Other days, John still hopes for one last miracle.

* * *

It's been seven months. Seven months that feel like seven lifetimes.

Seven lifetimes of sleeping fitfully in dingy hotel rooms, seven lifetimes of chasing across the world, bag full of disguises and notes and fake passports.

He refused to let any of them escape. If he did nothing else for seven lifetimes, he would finish this.

By the time he aligned his sights on Moran, he'd felt like an old man, finger almost too weak and tired to pull the trigger, to end this.

Almost.

Not quite.

He is surprised how little seemed to have changed, after seven lifetimes.

The skull is still sitting on the mantle. His books are still on the shelves, haphazard as ever.

(They've been moved. His madness had a method; this is nothing but replication. They had been removed, then replaced by someone who remembered the mess but not the precise system.)

His socks had been re-indexed.

He had expected to return to Baker Street to find that John had moved on. Gotten a girlfriend, maybe (it would be easier for him, without a mad flatmate-colleague-friend to chase them away), or perhaps a new flatmate.

But he hadn't. He was waiting.

They both were.

As he waits, Sherlock picks up a book - unfamiliar - lying on John's armchair.

(Leather-bound, no title on the cover or spine. Low quality of leather and binding combined with absence of title indicate self-published. Thumbed through often, but didn't fall open with ease, so well-handled but not well-read. Perhaps a collection of John's blog entries over their time together.)

He flips it open at random, reads the first sentence on the page he's chosen. Stops. Flips back to the title page. Stares.

_An Analysis of Tobacco Ash_   
_S. Holmes_

He's so absorbed he doesn't hear the stairs creak, and he's startled when the door to the flat swings open.

John.

He looks older, Sherlock notices. Perhaps not seven lifetimes. But close.

As John stares at him, and he stares back at John, book still in hand, he realizes that now that he's here, he doesn't know what to say.

John leans against the doorframe (favoring his left side, his shock must have triggered his psychosomatic limp, leaning to hold himself up). "Sher - " he starts; falters. Tries again. "Sherlock - "

"You've indexed my socks wrong," Sherlock hears himself say, and he knows they're not the right words, but he hopes that, after seven lifetimes, John will understand anyway.

* * *

He does.


End file.
